nereid
by sunspots and raindrops
Summary: She is Amphitrite; beautiful and wearing him down to fragile-boned truth in tidal waves and a thousand tiny susurrations. — [Soo-won/Lili, vague future setting, no spoilers, follow-up to "visceral."]


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 _I map the words out; maybe you will say them,_

 _Won't you help me rise up,  
Touch my face and watch me try to breathe again?_

 _Overcome me, overcome me,_

 _All I'm asking is to be_

 _alive._

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They are alone, in the inner courtyard adjacent to his chambers, the air heavy with the scent of plum blossoms and the moon high but half-shrouded in cloud, when he confesses.

"Lili," he whispers against her cheek, "I'm a murderer."

His voice is broken and his fingers shake where they rest against her collarbone in the gentlest grazing touch. She cannot do anything but hold him, press a kiss to his temple like it can heal the wounds there – the ones that still throb just below the surface in the guilty pulse of his thoughts, the ones that still fester in his blood, poisoning his heart with self-loathing.

His fingers have not moved, still barely brushing against her skin, as if he is afraid to break her. No, she _knows_ he is — afraid of what he has done, what he could yet do to her, afraid of himself. In that moment, Soo-Won is not a conqueror or a king, he is a mortal, a _man_ ; the lost and broken and beautiful boy that has been hiding so very many layers deep is, at last, exposed.

But then again, she has known all this for a long time.

Sometimes, thinking back to their meeting, she cannot help but feel it was a coincidental crux of fate. She had still been a girl then – blind-justice-driven, naive, simpler because she had not yet experienced to a great extent the way the world worked. But even so, she had not been blind to his pain. Back then, she had not known who he was or what that would mean, she just found herself drawn to him, fascinated – the tide to the moon, the ocean to the shore.

Even when she had found out about Yona and discovered Soo-Won's misdeeds, she had still been able to be _herself_. At the time, she'd still had her absurd infatuation with General Geun-Tae despite his being married, even, but it had allowed her uncanny friendship with the king to grow. Until one day she realized that Geun-Tae was a just distant memory and all of her stray daydreams were of rose-gold glints of hair and long, regal robes sweeping around the corner to meet her. And even now, Lili swears she can still feel the sensation of his hand pressed to her mouth; but his eyes – oh his eyes had been what had truly caught her and pinned her down, and it is a feeling that haunts her dreams.

Lili had never forgotten just what the king was capable of, for indeed, she herself had seen his discernment and calculated actions firsthand as the months went on. But this side to him was strangely fitting, slotting right alongside the part of him that laughed at her, smiled for her, let his fingers brush hers just slightly. It was another piece to the puzzle that was Soo-Won, and she could not help but find herself utterly enthralled with trying to discover all the pieces, to understand him.

What she had found, eventually, was a man steeped in melancholy and second-guesses; not rotten or evil, just scarred and hurting and _scared_. And saddest of all, too proud and focused on his goals to let anyone see it. Except Lili _had_ seen it, and she knew he knew she had one day when he'd asked her to give him a tour of the palace's water gardens.

She had obliged, and when they'd been finally, blessedly alone, he'd given her a look, _the_ look, one of despair and desperation and the tiniest glimmer of hope. The one that said, _You see me, please see me, **please** tell me you see me_. And Lili had held his gaze steadily, something like an anchor, like gravity, like permanence in her eyes.

That was when he'd kissed her, pressing her against the wooden support of a gazebo, her fingers grasping blindly at his robe. There had been no going back after that; Lili and Soo-Won became a _they_.

They had kept things private – she did not care for becoming Queen or attaining power by exploiting their relationship, no matter however many times it was insinuated to her by others; to his credit, he did not pressure her, only asking her to accompany him to the occasional social event. Soo-Won, like her, seemed to be content to find solace in honesty, in time out of the public eye, in each other as they stayed afloat against the turbulence of the world.

Except that he had never truly told her the deepest, darkest thoughts that plagued him, never expressed them with _words_. Until now.

Lili is sad in a way that settles deep in her gut, and it's different than the blow of being ignored by her father, a far cry from the stab of losing her mother — it's a crushing weight, the knowledge that nothing can fix this, that everything is _not_ going to be okay. She sifts through her thoughts in an attempt to pick out one that could comfort, heal. But it's futile — no words come, so she settles for stroking her fingers through the strands of his hair, soothing in a touch that says what she cannot voice because she has never been fond of lying.

He does not seem to expect her to say anything; he stays where he is, teetering on the edge of regret and neediness against her. Soo-Won does not fall asleep – she doubts that he could, even here in complete safety within the palace walls, even with her here – but after long minutes pass, he slumps down to rest his head in her lap, arm over his face and hand grasping for hers. Lili gives it without hesitation, a small reassurance in the grip of them palm to palm.

The wind whispers through the leaves, telling secrets neither of them can quite make out, but she thinks she knows what to say, now, leaning over him with her hair like an inky curtain between them and the world.

In this sanctum, the truth slips from her tongue easily; the salty-sweet taste of tears that could be is on her lips as she shapes them into syllables that flutter across his face when his arm drops to dangle from the bench. She is no priest, but she will take his confessions; he has no one else to reveal them to.

"I forgive you," she says, and he opens his eyes.

His glittering gaze does not hold any smiles or absolution; it still aches and throbs with old, familiar guilt and she can see the painful truth – he keeps breaking because he loves too deeply, oh he loves, he _loves_. And she cannot help but love him back.

Lili stands up then, tugging him back toward his bedchambers with a silent, solid pull. It promises more than she can say – love neither of them will speak aloud and a vow that she will be the surf reaching up on the shore to sweep away anything that has marred it, erasing the past for precious moments, wiping the slate as clean as it will ever be.

Over and over, she will give him what she can, wave after wave of love and acceptance – individually impermanent, but altogether a covenant – that they will keep washing over his weary heart.

Until the moon no longer rises, until the sea no longer whispers against the sand, until the rhythm of tide and time echoes into nothing, she will love him until she has nothing left to give.

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 **A/N:** Not sure what finally inspired me to write this, but I did and now I'm kind of contemplating another follow-up. It would definitely have to be after more takes place in the manga, so who knows when that will be. However, I was curious and found only three (THREE!) other Soo-Won/Lili fics here on ff, so now I really feel like I want to contribute more.

This was scribbled out furiously in the course of one sleepless night so please let me know if you find any spelling or grammatical errors! Lyrics belong to Vienna Teng.

As always, thank you for reading and feel free to share your thoughts as it would be much appreciated :)


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